ACT education system renewal is no threat to its founding principles |
In his Canberra Times op-ed "ACT's education system under threat" (November 15, 2025), Dr Will Brehm of University of Canberra reports that he has recently become acquainted with the "extraordinary experiment" in ACT government school education that was set up in the mid 1970s, and is now "fascinated" by its legacy. He suggests that we "maintain the rage" and preserve that system.
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The development of the "radical" ACT education system 50 years ago was driven by a grassroots parent, teacher and community movement, when the NSW school system was proving inadequate for Canberra's burgeoning population of young families. Under that system as implemented, considerable autonomy was devolved to school leaders. The purpose of this decentralised model was to enable schools to be more responsive to the needs of local students, with close involvement from the community. Broadly, the system worked well for 25 years.
But no legacy is worth preserving if it's no longer fit for purpose. The core purpose of a public education system is to provide every child, no matter what their background or ability, an excellent education that will free them to reach their full, exciting, potential. That's what they thought in the 1970s; and today, that's what we still think.
Although a general slide in literacy and numeracy outcomes has been ongoing across every Australian state and territory for a decade, in the ACT over the same period learning outcomes have been consistently below other jurisdictions of similar high socio-economic advantage. Over time, it became clear that a complex interplay of factors had combined to create a stagnating system that was overdue for reform.
The longstanding model of school autonomy had led to increasingly local-level decision making and management being devolved to school leaders, increasing workloads for school leaders, and blurring their necessary focus on the core business of educating students. Considerable variability and inequality between schools within the government system had developed: policies that should be determined centrally and applied to every school to achieve equity and........